This invention relates to a device for removing peduncles between printed circuit boards.
In the art of mass production of printed circuits there are often provided multiples of the same printed article in a single plate to be later separated from each other after completion of treatment and mounting of the components. Said art is advantageously applied especially with small printed circuits the handling of which whether manual or automatic would be difficult if taken individually, especially in the assembly and welding phase of the components thereof.
Generally, to make easier the subsequent separation of the printed circuits during the production of the board the separation lines between them are milled, thus providing between the printed circuit boards a slot broken only by small joining peduncles which are removed at the end of the assembly operations.
In the known art various solutions to the problem of removing said peduncles have been proposed but they all suffer from various drawbacks which make them unsatisfactory.
For example, there are known numerically controlled machines which eliminate the peduncles by the automatic movement of a small milling head. The need to program the machine on the basis of the conformation of the printed circuit boards to be treated makes the solution acceptable only for large production runs because of the high cost of the machine. In addition the production of dust is high and harmful to the quality of the electronic circuit being processed.
Another separation method calls for the use of shears under which an operator positions sequentially the peduncles of the printed circuit boards to be separated. Shears suffer however from the serious drawback of excessively stressing the printed circuit boards and causing cracking at the edges and possible detachment of the welded components. In addition, the danger of the devices for the operator is high since only a brief distraction is enough to cause a serious injury. Lastly, good skill is required to obtain perfect removal of the peduncles without affecting other parts of the printed circuit board.
As an alternative to the use of expressly made devices there are also used methods which call for the use of general purpose hand cutting tools such as nippers and the like and then hand filing of the ragged edges thus obtained. But it is clear that such systems produce considerable loss of time and results which are not always acceptable. In addition, with very small printed circuit boards the welded components are very near the edge and hence easily damaged during processing.